BARTH’S TURNABOUT FROM THE BIBLICAL NORM
Karl Barth asserts that “we distinguish the Bible as such from revelation. A witness is not absolutely identical with that to which it witnesses” and that “it is really not laid upon us to take everything in the Bible as true in globo.” After pointing this out and showing that Barth makes Mark contradict Paul in Colossians, Gordon H. Clark, in his Karl Barth’s Theological Method, comments as follows:
“Here the question is, How does one decide what to believe and what not to believe? Whether we are faced with mutually contradictory verses or with credible and incredible narratives, a principle of distinction is necessary.
“The type of principle required is perfectly clear. The only way in which a decision can be reached in these choices lies in the use of some non-scriptural principle. Biblical norms are impossible. Since both verses or both narratives are equally in the Bible, obviously it is not by their being in the Bible that they can be judged. Nor can an appeal be made to some other verse in the Bible, for it too may have its contradictory and will itself need to be judged on the basis of some independent principles.
“Therefore a theologian must choose one of three positions. He may mystically take the irrational position of accepting contradictions.… Now, … no critic can believe that Barth intends to be irrational. There may be vestigial remains of Paradox and the Totally Other, and these may be evaluated as flaws, even serious flaws, in his thought; but he also laid great stress on rational communication.
“The second position is that of the Protestant Reformers. Verbal inspiration may face problems in exegeting Mark and Colossians, … but the entanglements and confusions of contemporary theology … hold no terrors, hold no perplexities for the orthodox system.
“If, now, one rejects the infallible authority of the Scriptures, the third position alone remains. This position is the acceptance, as a norm or standard, of something external to the Bible. Mark and Colossians must be measured against an independent principle. Since this external norm cannot be a wordless revelation, for a wordless revelation cannot give the necessary information, it must be secular science, history, or anthropology. Of course, this is what Barth had vehemently objected to in his attack on modernism. A norm or canon other than Scripture is something Barth does not want at all. But the construction of his system has not enabled him to escape it. The result is that Barth’s theology is self-contradictory. He operates on the basis of incompatible axioms, and against his hopes and aims arrives at an untenable or irrational position.…
“The school to which Barth belongs, or at least the movement that Barth initiated, has a heritage of irrationalism. Barth himself is probably the least irrational of them all. Yet even Barth, in his great enthusiasm to proclaim the good news that the Word became flesh, tends to forget that what became flesh and spoke in human language was the Word, the Logos, the infallible Reason of God.” (Quoted by permission from Karl Barth’s Theological Method, by Gordon H. Clark, to be published in 1963 by the Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company.)
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